Back to School
Posted: Saturday, August 27, 2011
by Patricia Barbee
http://www.patriciabarbee.com
Having sat on both sides of the teacher's desk, I can only say "Whoopee!".
As a youngster, the teachers and parents were a collective of adults with my interest being the utmost concern. I went to all girls' schools and was always happy to get back to class to share in the excitement of the others. Travel stories were the most fun.
I had many escapades with my mini- all girls' tribe that our parents never learned of and time has taken them, so only the Angels can tell on us now. We never got into mischief. We just meandered from our designated area of parental freedom. Whoopee!
As an adult many years and miles from home, I was at the supermarket in the small town that I no longer call my "nest in the forest". I was not used to the heat and had to drive to town for one of the kin. I wore loose African robes. Believe me those long robes hold cool air. Being unknown my outfit created a stir in the store. I look as African as a flamingo. Yes, I'd wear pink feathers too.
I watched the two women in front of me. It was obvious they were related. Later I learned they were mother and daughter. If they were alive they'd be at least one hundred twenty and a hundred respectively. The clerk was ringing up their purchases and I noticed the numbers on the back of cash register were purposely covered. As the clerk told the women the total that I could not hear, both handed her books of Food Stamps and one had a snap-close leather coin purse and poured all the change into the clerk's hands. That woman tore out Food Stamp Coupons until her heart was content. Then, she counted silently the coins she was taking and setting them someplace. Had they gone into the register, I'd have heard the noise of coins clinking. To this day, I believe these women were cheated. I'd not been in the community long enough to understand the nuisances and make a stink about what I just witnessed. I was the odd looking one wearing my comfortable outfit.
I told the priest at my church what I'd witnessed. We talked about too many of the area being not just undereducated but uneducated.
He told me if I wanted to do something about it, I had his Blessings. I could use the Church hall. In weeks, I secured the assistance of educated Church members and the word was out that school for Adults was beginning. We taught on Tuesday nights.
One of our Sisters was the person who ran the community's health clinic. She also joined in.
We were informal with the plan I worked for the Adults. Our youngest was about nineteen and our oldest was happy to tell she was eighty-three.
Our youngest was developmentally delayed and never got a chance in those days. Programs were not on the horizon for folks in her condition.
One of our students was removed from school in the second grade to work in the fields in order to feed the family. His wish was to be able to read his Bible and do so in his church in his Sunday School.
For text books and literature, we got most free. We used the Wednesday sale papers that get delivered on Tuesdays.
I had a Ditto machine that had seen years of service for many memos and presentations including your scribe's words that are now forever in the Congressional Record because of testifying in Congress on many issues. I'd buy paper by the case. Yes, ten reams to the case or five thousand sheets at a time. I never kept up with the gallons of fluid I bought.
I had paper and fluid left over. I purchased books that taught the student to write the alphabet. I ran off sets for each student.
A newspaper from the next county visited us one evening. We were in that paper with color photos.
We gave our school a name with our priest's Blessing.
After a few weeks our students could find and read everything in the sales papers. They began printing their OWN names. There'd be no more marking an "X" with a witness.
We got all but one to sign their name in cursive. The students had to bring all their medicines with them.
After Sister closed the clinic, she'd come to take each person to another room and discuss the combinations of medicines. The horrors were the home remedies that were deadly combinations or made prescribed medicines inert.
Within the whole classroom setting Sister, taught all to read the pharmacist's labels. We learned there were some lazy or just "piss-poor" pharmacies underserving the neediest.
"Pain Pill", take four times a day.
There was no care on the label as we'd expect, "Take before a meal with orange juice; take with a meal; take on a full stomach, etc". Do not take with grapefruit juice.
None of this type of information was mentioned on the label. Many were Blessed to have lived so long with such lousy treatment.
After our first year, we decided to take our students on an outing. I called a National Park on the East Coast. I told the Ranger the name of the school and all the students were adults. I was prepared to pay for each student's entry. I had the lead car.
At the gate, the Ranger asked if we were a group. I responded and gave our "school's' name. "Wonderful, all schools get in for free."
I must have really looked bewildered. He asked if I was okay and then which vehicle was the last in our caravan.
I thanked him and we went to the parking area he designated. Some of the students had never been that far away from home. We went about sixty miles one way that day.
The joy I have remembering them taking their shoes off to let their toes feel the sand. Whoopee!
With shoes on they looked for seashells. They listened to a Ranger give United States History of the Park. Whoopee!
The man who wanted to read his Bible in Sunday School class did. I was told there was not a dry eye in the room. Heaven granted him his wish. He did not realize how hard he worked for that day.
All the Adults have passed except our youngest, who married, and is now a widow. She was able to sign her name for her marriage certificate. Whoopee!
Yes, I am a Certified Literacy Instructor.
I am also a Certified Substitute Teacher for all grades. I can substitute in Spanish because it was my second language.
Now to why I called the County's Superintendent's office and told them to remove my name from the substitute teachers' list. I had a fifth grader disrupt my class for at least twenty minutes and then curse at me. I pressed the button for the on-site police officer to come get the child.
The vice-principal came; took the boy out. The other students applauded. Within five minutes the vice principal returned to challenge me on what I "thought" I heard in front of the nasty-mouthed imp.
Nothing like that would have ever happened in my classes in the "old days". My Grandfather would have been at the school before the Principal put the telephone receiver in the cradle.
I got into Vice-Principal's face and told him, I'd write two letters giving the School Board permission to have copies of my hearing tests from two different nearby hospitals.
Knowing, I'm not going back to school as a student or teacher, I say Whoopeeeeeee!
Patricia Barbee © 2011
Patricia Barbee
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